“Relax,” Tooth says. He nods at Jeb, who puts his guitar aside, leans forward, and folds his hands together.

“I’ll get right to it,” Jeb says. “Our church has a co-ed slow pitch softball team. In the three years of our existence, we have been defeated every year.”

“You’ve been what?” I say.

“Defeated,” he says.

“What do you mean? Emotionally defeated?” I say.

“No, you know how some teams go undefeated?” he says. “We were defeated.”

“Oh, you mean winless,” I say.

“Yes, winless,” Jeb concedes, looking confused by the semantics. “Anyway, we’re trying to change that. In an effort to become more competitive, we’ve opened the team to non-church members. David and I thought it would be a good idea to see if any of you were interested in joining.”

“Who’s David?” I say.

Wrinkling his brow at the question, Jeb aims a finger at Tooth, who points to himself as if to say how could you not know that?

“The team is going to be great,” Jeb says. “I’m putting together a whole new angle. New name, new T-shirts, everything.”

I start hyperventilating. Pieces of information fall together in my mind.

“Is that…why you let me go on and on with my story?” I say.Tooth shrugs. “You needed to get it off your chest, right?” he says. “We listened. We were there for you. Now we need you to be there for us.” Tooth looks at Jeb. “What do you think? Shortstop?”

“Pitcher, maybe,” Jeb says, looking me up and down, making me feel dirty.Tooth produces some pieces of paper. “This is our plan of attack,” he says. “Line-ups, recruiting ideas, playing strategies, silent prayers for church, and so on.”

I look through the hand-written material. There’s a softball diamond illustration with various names at each position. My name is written in the corner with a question mark. Then is the list of recruiting ideas. One reads Form competitor support group. Another says Befriend tailgaters at Bears games. Another reads Visit construction sites.

I feel sick.

“What’s the matter with you people?” I say. “This behavior doesn’t seem very…church-like.”

“Really?” Tooth says. “Trying to spread a message and acquire new members to make ourselves more powerful? That doesn’t seem church-like to you?”

“Good point,” I say, returning my attention to the plans. The last page sends me over the edge. It looks like the Death Star.

“What’s this?” I say.

“The design for a bionic intraocular lens implant,” Tooth says.

Patch smiles. “Once I have the surgery, I’ll be able to play any position again,” he says.

I slump into my chair. Trembling and terrified, I whisper to myself…more machine than man, twisted and evil. I study the eye patch; it bears a suspicious resemblance to the convex oval blackness of Darth Vader’s glare.

Blackhawk makes a foul noise and reveals the whoopie cushion beneath him.Patch has a battery-powered mouthpiece that lights up his teeth in red, blue and green.

In the center of the group are strings of amusement tickets. The thousands upon thousands of tickets combine to create a mountain rivaling Devil’s Tower itself.

“I made up for the Yarthies debacle by finding a video game arcade on the way home,” I say. “It cost me a mere 150 bucks for…” I look at Annie. “…some giant sunglasses…” I look at plunger. “…some Chinese handcuffs…” I look everywhere else. “…and a bunch of other novelty items that cost a nickel to make in China.”

“But it made the kids happy, right?” Tooth says, popping a Tootsie Roll in his mouth.

“It did indeed,” I say.

“Then worth every nickel,” Tooth says.

“So how was Bill when you got back?” Patch says, his mouth flickering like a fireworks display.

Bill stands in the middle of the giant pile of tickets, wearing the melancholy expression of a man whose team has recently lost Game 7. He holds out his arms for a man hug. I rise without hesitation, and we embrace.

“Aw, that’s so sweet,” Annie says.

After the hug, I smile at Bill, revealing a plastic set of hillbilly teeth. He lets out a light chuckle and puts his hand on my shoulder.

“We’ll get ‘em next year, buddy,” he says to me.

“Not if LeBron takes his talents to South Beach,” Bandana says.

Bill points at Bandana and gives a stern look.

“Don’t get me started, you,” Bill says.

Flash forward to me and Bill in his basement, watching the Heat take down the Celtics in Game 5 of the 2011 playoffs.

“I’m planning to add a decree to my will,” Bill says, casting an empty glare at the screen. “I’m going to be cremated, have the ashes dyed green, and then have myself poured from a helicopter into LeBron James’ swimming pool.” He smiles at the notion. “Now that would be a grand statement,” he says. “You know how hard it would be for LeBron’s pool guy to clean out the ashes? And the water would probably be green for, like, days afterward. That would be something.”

I nod. “I’ll do Kobe’s pool,” I say.

“Cool,” Bill says.

Tooth finishes off the half-dozen Tootsie Rolls he was holding. He speaks through a substantial chunk of brown confection.

“Well, folks, now that Doug’s story is finished…” Tooth looks to me. “It is finished, right, Doug?”

I nod. Tooth proceeds.

“I have a little surprise for everyone,” he says.

Being the cinema-slash-pop-culture aficionado that I am, I imagine this to be the part of the story involving the big “twist,” where everything I once thought I knew is thrown out the window, and my world turns upside-down.

I stand over Frank’s bed, trembling in the darkness, wondering if I should give me a chance to talk myself out of it.

No. Don’t retreat. Victory is yours. Seize it.

I look around the room for Patch or Tooth. Even they want nothing to do with this.

I glance over at Bonnie, sleeping soundly.

What will she think of me? one voice says. The other replies: She lives 7 hours away and you never see her. Who cares what she’ll think? Besides, if she ostracizes you, you don’t have to see Frank ever again. The first voice is impressed: Good point.

I take a deep breath. I’m going to have to do this at full throat. Whispering, hushed voice, normal voice – none of that will get it done. If I give Frank an opportunity to think, I’m doomed. I need to be committed to anarchy, to unleashing hell.

It’s time.

I fill my lungs and proceed to scream. Frank bolts upright, almost knocking noggins with Lucius, which startles me, but I maintain my resolve.

I lean over and lock eyeballs with Frank. Bathed in moonlight, I stare into Frank’s eyes, years of defeat and frustration powering my gaze.

“Yarthies,” I say.

A moment later the baby is wailing and Bonnie is circling the bed. I raise my arms in victory.

“That’s right!” I say. “Yarthies! I win! You lose!”

Bonnie takes Lucius and ushers him out of the bedroom as if he isn’t safe. When she reaches the hallway, I can hear her reassuring people, telling them that everything is ok and to go back to bed.

Frank sits in motionless fury, his darkened, monstrous silhouette oozing menace. He looks like a Batman villain comic book cover.

“Get out,” he says.

I move toward the door. “Sure, I’ll let you get back to-”.

“No, I mean get out of my house,” he says.

“Now?” I say. “It’s almost midnight.”

“Now,” he confirms.

“Don’t you think you’re being kind of a sore loser here?” I say.

Bonnie reappears. She flips on the overhead light, and all three of us are squinting.

“I gave Lucius his binky. He’s fine,” she says. For a moment, her face is devoid of expression, too exhausted to be angry. But that doesn’t last long. She smacks me on the shoulder. “What the hell is the matter with you?” she says. “What if Frank dropped him?”

“Frank wouldn’t drop his baby to win a game,” I say. “That would be inhuman. Aren’t you glad to know you’re human, Frank?”

His entire face clenched, Frank glares at Bonnie. “Ruling,” he says.

Bonnie looks back and forth between the two of us. “Oh no,” she says. “You’re not getting me involved in your stupid game.”

“I want a ruling,” Frank says. “I’ll accept your judgment.”

Bonnie forces herself to think. “Ok…well…he handed you Lucius and you accepted him,” Bonnie says. “As much as I hate my baby being used as a prop, I’d say it’s legit.”

I start dancing around with I’m-number-one fingers in the air. “Yeah, baby,” I say, then revert to my old Boston accent. “Winnaaahhhh!”

Bonnie hits me again, harder this time. The pain feels great.

“If you use any member of my family for something like that again, I’ll kill you,” she says.

“That’s ok,” I say, grinning at Frank. “No more Yarthies for me. I’m ending my career as champion.”

Frank is still glaring at his wife. “I can’t believe you ruled against me,” he says.

Bonnie shrugs. “It wasn’t pleasant, but it was fair,” she says.

“It’s because you don’t even like me,” Frank says. “That’s why you did it.”

Bonnie’s voice goes up an octave. “What are you talking about?” she says, but her voice is shaking and she feeds me a terrified glance like something bad is about to go down. “Of course I like you.”

“Then why haven’t we had sex since Lucius was conceived?” Frank says.

I stop dancing around. This is way more victory than I needed.

I start backing out of the room.

“I’m gonna…head out,” I say, but they aren’t listening.

“Hell, maybe the dry spell has been even longer,” Frank says. “Is Lucius even mine?”

Bonnie looks down at Frank’s colossal mid-section. “Well, you must be one abundantly sympathetic man,” she says.

Bonnie and Frank continue barking at each other as I close the bedroom door behind me. Shannon waits for me on the other side, her arms crossed over her chest. I startle at the sight of her.

“Hi honey,” I say.

“What did you just do?” she says.

I raise my arms in victory. “Oh, I only just won Yarthies, that’s all,” I say.

“You need help,” Shannon says. “Look, I’m sorry the Celtics lost and everything, but that’s no reason to take out your frustration on innocent relatives.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say. “Don’t blame the Celtics. This is something I needed for me.”

“Right, and you needed it because of Game 7.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion,” I say.

Bonnie opens the bedroom door just wide enough for her face.

“Hey you guys,” she says in a modulated voice you’d use on a mental patient wielding a knife. “You’re going to need to leave.”

“Now?” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, come on,” I say. “Tell Frank he’s being ridiculous.”

“No, this is my decision, actually,” she says.

“What, you guys gonna fight?” I say. “We can handle some screaming for a while.”

“You really just need to go,” Bonnie says, still with the sing-songy nice voice.

“I’m your brother,” I say.

“And I love you and always will,” she says, still in that placid voice, “but you need to go.”

“Love me and always will?” I say. “What is Frank behind the door holding a gun to your head?”

Bonnie leans away, looking nervously at something behind the door.

“Could you two please just take your kids and go?” she says, the urgency in her voice growing.

Now I’m concerned.

“What’s going on?” I say.

“You ok, Bon Bon?” Shannon says.

The door swings open to reveal Frank, dressed in tight shorts, a tank top, sneakers and a head band.

“Please don’t say bonbon,” he tells Shannon, and heads down the hall. The rest of us follow him downstairs to the living room, where he yanks a blanket off a rowing machine. He takes a seat, the collective fabric of his outfit stretching around his formidable girth, and starts rowing. As his titanic mass shifts forward and back in rhythm, the air resistance wheel spins, generating a noise resembling a jet engine and a wind that billows the curtains.

“This is all for you, baby,” Frank says over the whirr. “This is how much I love you!”

“That’s great, honey,” Bonnie says, offering a thumbs up and a vague, mocking grin. She turns to me and Shannon. “I didn’t want you to see this,” she says.

“It’s happened before?” I say.

“Every time he gets insecure about his weight,” Bonnie says, nodding and smiling at Frank, who can’t hear us over the noise. He winks at Bonnie, his thinning hair fluttering in the wind.

“Now that you’ve seen it, I guess there’s no harm in you staying,” Bonnie says, wincing each time Frank’s body pumps like a fleshy piston. “He’s going to do this until his heart gives out. If things hold true to form, we can expect an ambulance visit about 4 a.m.”

Dev, Edwin, and Fiona appear at the top of the stairs.

“I can’t sleep,” Fiona says.

“What’s that noise?” Edwin says.

Shannon and I look at each other, then at Frank, who shows no signs of slowing.

“Yeah, I think we’re gonna head out,” I say.

In the car, I take an intentional, dramatic pause before starting the ignition, and stare at Shannon.

While Shannon gathers herself, mystified, Patch appears in the back seat.

“You, sir, are my hero,” he says. “Now you want an apology too? High five!”

Patch puts his hand in the air. I ignore it.

Shannon turns to me, fists clenched tight in her lap.

“You’re right,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

I nod my acceptance, and am about to start the car, but she isn’t finished.

“I’m sorry I thought you were mature,” she says. “I’m sorry I thought you would lose to Frank because you were not as single-minded, childish, and obsessed with winning as he was. I’m sorry. I misjudged you.”

I ponder the apology.

“Well, that was a bit more than I was looking for, but ok,” I say, starting the car. “Is there a hotel around here?”

“Just head to the highway,” Shannon says. “We’ll find something.”

As I navigate by the light of the GPS, I can’t strike the image of Frank’s ponderous, scantily clad form swaying across the rowing machine out of my head.

Earlier that night, Frank handed me the remote control and said “I’m going to bed. I bequeath control of the television unto you.”

At the last second, I caught on. I dropped the remote like it was on fire.

“He’s going to get you tomorrow, you know,” Shannon says.

“So you’re that sure, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because your life is fuller than his,” she says. “As the day goes on, you will get distracted with other things – the kids, seeing Kansas City, being on vacation, but he will not stop quietly devising a way to beat you.”

“Nice try,” I say. “That was a very polite way of telling me that I’m a loser. At least I’m not the one who has an oops baby.”

“A what?”

“An oops baby,” I say. “His other boys are 9 and 8 years old. Nobody plans a family like that.”

“Lucius is probably unplanned,” Shannon concedes. “It doesn’t make him any less a human being.”

“I didn’t say that,” I say.

“You implied it,” she says.

“Hey, I’m just concerned for poor Lucius, having to grow up only to eventually realize that his parents-”

“I’m going to do you a favor and keep you from finishing that sentence,” Shannon says.

“The rules of Yarthies are simple,” I say, pacing inside the circle. “If one player directly hands another player something – anything – and the other player takes it, the giver can say ‘Yarthies,’ and the game is over.”

Plunger throws his plunger at me. I catch it.

“Yarthies,” Plunger says, grinning.

“Nope,” I say. “Nothing can be thrown, tossed, hurled, or otherwise chucked at the other person. The object can only be…” I walk over to Plunger and hand it to him. “…handed over, and…” he takes it, “…accepted. The game relies on a mental lapse of the receiver. If he takes the item, he is susceptible to Yarthies.”

“You said these games can last a long time…sometimes years,” Patch says.

“That’s right,” I say.

“What if the giver has a mental lapse, and just happens to hand another player something, but forgets to say anything?” Patch says.

“Then the game continues,” I say.

Patch nods his understanding.

“The first couple of games against Frank lasted only a few hours,” I say. “He would hand me a pen or a piece of paper, and I was done. Our third game lasted 8 months. It ended when Frank told me a USB drive he was holding contained ‘the greatest video ever.’ Assuming it was porn, I took it from him without a thought, and he won. The fourth game lasted 2 years. Frank won that game when he happened to be sitting next to me in a company meeting. There was a handout that came to Frank first. He took one, handed the rest to me, and whispered Yarthies out the corner of his mouth. There have been no games since.”

“So you’ve never won,” Tooth says.

“Correct,” I say.

Tooth grins.

“So this is it,” he says.

“This is what?” I say.

“The reason you’re here,” he says.

I say nothing, choosing instead to let the story tell itself.

The double bed from the guest room of Frank and Bonnie’s home appears. Shannon lies in it, staring forlornly at the ceiling. I climb in next to her.

“You should’ve seen your face when I hit the water!” Frank bellows across the dinner table. “Complete shock.”

“I’ll bet,” I say, trying to smile as if I enjoyed being punk’d in front of my kids.

“You’re quite the jokester, Frank.”

“That’s why your sis loves me,” Frank says, winking his chunky eyelid at Bonnie, who looks back at him as if the love faded years ago.

Frank looks at my kids and leans forward.

“Did you guys know your dad and I used to work together back in Boston?” he asks.Dev, Edwin and Fiona jointly shake their heads.

Frank turns to his sons. “That’s how I met your mother, boys.”

“So…why exactly did I introduce you to this guy again?” I say to Bonnie. I wink at Frank like I’m joking. He buys it, then looks wistfully into the air.

“Ah, those were the days,” he says. “You remember those days, Doug?”

“They were days, all right,” I say.

Frank looks around the table. “Doug and I pranked each other in the office a lot,” he says. “You remember that last one, Doug?”

“You mean the one that got me transferred to Chicago, and got you fired?” I say.

“That’s the one,” Frank says. “If I hadn’t found the KC job so fast at twice the money and half the hours, I might be ticked at you for letting things get so out of hand.”

I make anger fists in my lap. My new job resulted in less pay and more hours.

“What are you doing again?” I say.

“Software Technology Data Specialist,” Franks says.

“STD Specialist,” I say. “Does that require special gloves?”

“Funny,” Frank says. Tapping his chunky fingers to the table, he gets a pained look on his face. “What was the last prank you pulled on me? It was so lame I can barely even remember.”

“I replaced your computer with a cardboard one,” I say.“Right!” Frank says, pointing at me. His wedding ring looks like it’s wrapped around a raw Kielbasa. He scans the kids’ faces and grins. “It was so cute,” he says. “Doug made a computer screen, keyboard, mouse, even a computer chair out of cardboard. Took me about ten minutes to put everything back in place…You remember what I did, Doug?”

Infatuated with himself, Frank swells with pride. This is no simple task, given that he is already a distended parade float of a man in his normal state.

Bonnie and Shannon are both stone-faced and still. They remember it well. How could they not? Both their lives were forever changed as a result.

A high-pitched wail erupts through a baby monitor in the corner. Bonnie rises without hesitation. She clearly wants nothing to do with this conversation.

“Lucius is awake,” she says.

“I’ll help,” Shannon says, equally repelled by the subject matter.

The wives disappear, leaving Frank, five kids, and me – one fully-formed frontal lobe between the lot of us.

“So what did he do, Dad?” Devlin says.

I know if I sound angry or look defeated, it’s going to make me seem like an even bigger putz, so I don’t hesitate or speak with malice.

“He messed with my Microsoft Word settings so that whenever I typed our company name, it would automatically change to the word ‘penis,’” I say.

The kids all gasp and giggle with delight. Only Devlin really seems to understand – the rest of them are merely enchanted by the word penis.

Frank smacks the table. “Is that awesome or what?” he says.

“Yeah, it was the most unusual quarterly report our female CEO had ever seen,” I say.

“Well, you should’ve done a spell check,” Frank says.

“I did,” I say, “but Penis is an actual word, so-”

“Well, you should’ve proofread,” Frank says. He looks around at the kids and scoffs. “Who doesn’t proofread a document they’re sending to a CEO?”

“You’re right,” I say. “It was my fault.”

Bonnie and Shannon return. Bonnie is cradling Lucius, their 9-month-old, in her arms. He’s cute – reddish hair and blue eyes, like Bonnie.

“Here’s your new nephew, Doug,” Bonnie says, looking as proud of her son as Frank did about sabotaging my auto-correct feature.

“Yeah, he’s cute,” I say in a thoughtless whatever tone, and return my attention to Frank. “How about a game of Yarthies, Frank?”

The lights dim and there’s a pulse of dramatic music. Frank replies, but his lips don’t match up with his words.

“Yarthies, eh?” he says. “You’re only here two days. You think you can beat me in two days?”

Our last Yarthies match went 2 years.

“I do,” I say. From my pockets I produce ninja throwing stars. They make a metallic zing as I spread them in my fingers. I hurl them at Frank, who halts them in midair with a wave of his open hand. The stars fall harmlessly to the table.

“I got knife-scars more than the number of your leg's hair!” Frank says. “Do you feel the stink smell? That is you.”

“You’re petulant, but not concentrated enough,” I reply. “I have been scared like a mouse too much lately. Your soul is nothing but toilet paper. I shall clean myself with it.”

“No, that was Samuel Clemens,” Tooth says. “But the fact that you knew Mark Twain is a pen name is astonishing. So…you get points for that.” Tooth focuses on me. “What I’m saying, Doug, is…you failed better. You accepted the Celtics’ fate and were mature and gracious for your son.”

I’m not buying it. Tooth can tell.

“What,” he says.

“I’m here,” I say.

Tooth doesn’t get it.

“Why would I be here if I failed better?” I say. “I put on a show for my son…I failed better temporarily.”

“I see,” Tooth says. “There’s more.”

I nod. A quiet chorus of groans wafts through the room.

“Now, now,” Tooth says. “Let’s be supportive, people.”

“Is there a lot more?” Patch says, “because I want to get back to talking about myself soon.”

“What about machine-generated cyborgs who have travelled back in time to kill the future leader of the human resistance?” Patch says.

“You just described Terminator,” I say. “And no.”

“I’ll bet Schwartzenegger does another sequel,” Stache says.

“He’s like 70,” Patch says. “How would he do that?”

“Well, maybe the machines failed with brute force, they tried to infiltrate the human resistance with terminator spies that age like humans,” Stache says.

Come with me if you want a great buffet.

“That’s genius,” Patch says, looking like a caveman who’s just witnessed the invention of fire.

I raise an index finger. “Uh…one question,” I say. “If the machines are going to try to infiltrate the human population, don’t you think they’d create a terminator spy that doesn’t look like Arnold Schwartzenegger, the same guy who’s been tormenting the humans forever?”

"The machines did figure that out," Patch says, looking disappointed that the idea is falling apart. "In the first movie, there was a terminator ripping up a human hideout, and it wasn't Arnie."

Dev starts to tear up as Sasha Vujacic hits another free throw, putting the Lakers up 4 with 11 seconds left in the game.

I feel like Dev looks, but an ingrained parental mechanism keeps me from showing it. Something about a father and son jointly overcome with grief over a sporting event strikes me as pathetic.

So I have to be the strong one.

“No need to cry,” I say as the clock ticks down.

I fumble for the remote. I can’t watch the Lakers celebrate. I hit the power button just as Kobe Bryant starts to jump around the court. At least we manage to avoid the confetti.

“So you want to play some pool?” I say.

Dev just sits there, red-eyed and sniffling.

“It’s just a basketball game,” I say.

God, listen to me. The Lakers just squeaked past us in a Finals Game 7 where we led most of the way, and I’m calling it just a basketball game. I can practically hear Jack Nicholson cackling all the way from Los Angeles.

“That was bullcrap,” Dev says. Bullcrap is one of those borderline curse words he’s allowed to say without being yelled at.

“Yes it was,” I agree, keeping calm.

“The officials sucked,” he says. Suck is another one of those words.

Now if I were talking to Bill, I would agree wholeheartedly that the officials sucked. I’d go off on the home-cookin’ calls down the stretch, and I might even gripe about how I thought Kobe intentionally undercut Perkins from behind in Game 6 to bust up his leg and keep him out of Game 7. With Bill, I could be my illogical, irrational fan self without consequences.

But this isn’t Bill. This conversation has consequences. Hell, past conversations had consequences, the result of which I’m seeing right now.

Time to end the cycle.

“Now, now,” I say. “The Lakers won fair and square.”

Dev drops his face into a couch pillow and cries into it. His muffled weeping makes me feel concern, guilt and anger all at once. Concern because I worry how he’ll weather disappointments in the future. Guilt because I may be partly to blame for his breakdown. Anger because I want to just put this moment of Celtic defeat behind me, and his crying isn’t helping. Not to mention, I really hate the idea that the Lakers can make my kid cry. It’s like they have power over us, and that’s discomforting.

“Hey, hey, hey,” I say. “Come on. This isn’t the end of the world.”

The noise from the pillow stops, but Dev keeps his face buried in shame.

“You know what?” I say. “In the grand scheme of things, this is not a big deal.”

Dev lifts his reddened face off the pillow to absorb my words of wisdom.

Annie and I sit next to each other – she with her bucket between her legs, I with my head in my lap.

Tooth gives us both the once over.

“Do you two really think the rest of the world should be more like you?” he says.

“Why not?” Annie says.

“So you’re the standard to which all others should aspire,” Tooth says, gesturing toward the bucket as if to reiterate the Really?

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I say.

“But you’d go part of the way,” Tooth says.

I shrug.

Tooth thinks a bit.

“Ok,” he says with hand clap. “Let’s try an exercise.”

“Exercise?” Bandana says. “Been reading those psych books again?”

Tooth ignores the comment. “We’re going to have a Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament,” he announces.

Just like a Laker fan. Brings paper to a shark knife fight.

Some groan. Others look excited.

Patch scoffs. “That’s a game of luck,” he says. “There’s no skill involved.”

“Precisely,” Tooth says. “The winner will be determined entirely by chance. We need to learn to accept that winning and losing is often beyond our control.”

“I already know that,” I say.

“But you don’t handle it well,” Tooth says.

“So you want me to feel good about being a loser?” I say.

“Listen to how you phrased that – being a loser,” Tooth says. “I want you to accept losing, not being a loser. Winning and losing does not define you. You need to stop treating it like it does.” Tooth stands. “Alright, let’s begin.”

He pairs us into twos and reminds us of the rules – rock breaks scissors, scissors cut paper, paper covers rock.

“Each round will be a best of 7 series,” Tooth says, with a wink to me. Amusing.

For starters, Annie and I face off.

“You ready to rock?” I say to her.

Squinting with concentration, she puts down her bucket and nods.

Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.

Now you might think I would go paper, given that Are you ready to rock? sounds like an attempt to put rock into her head.

But no.

Women have an inherent disrespect and distrust of men. Realizing I’m trying to make her think rock, Annie would expect me to go paper. To defend against this, she would go scissors.

Which she does. I go rock.

Rock breaks scissors. I’m up 1-0.

“Don’t rock the boat now,” I say.

Again with the rock. Will I go rock again? She either thinks I will, or thinks I’m expecting her to do so, which means I’m going rock or paper. In this case, her safest move is paper, giving her to the best odds to win or tie.

So of course, I go scissors. 2-0.

“This is strange,” I say. “On paper, you should be better than me at this.”Now I’ve got her on the run. She hopes I’ll go paper, so she goes scissors.

I go rock instead.

3-0.

I finish her off in 5.

The next round is Patch. You wouldn’t think a person playing Rock, Paper, Scissors would have a tell, but Patch does. His middle finger twitches before rock, he makes a tight fist before paper, and he opens his hand like paper before scissors. I polish him off in 6.

Finally, it’s me and tooth. Standing, he and I face each other while the rest of the group circles us like it’s Fight Club or something.

The first rule of Rock, Paper, Scissors is: you do not talk about Rock, Paper, Scissors. The second rule of Rock, Paper, Scissors is: you DO NOT talk about Rock, Paper, Scissors.

I’ve never looked at Tooth quite this close before. His wisp of a beard looks like something only a 12-year-old would be proud of.

“You and me in the Finals,” he says, grinning.

As I’m staring at Tooth, trying to concentrate, I get dizzy. Something unpleasant is about to happen. I can almost feel the neurotransmitters in my brain firing in preposterous directions…

…Patch taking in the whole scene with an ecstatic, childlike smile on his face, screaming “THIS IS AWESOME!”…

Paul Pierce. The Truth. You can’t handle the Truth.

“So are we gonna play, or what?” The voice is dark and sinister.

It’s him.

The acrobats morph into Laker cheerleaders. The bear grows into Kobe Bryant. The Cub Scouts turn into…well, larger Cub Scouts, but now their uniforms have a yellow and purple theme.

“What are we waiting for?” he says.

I’m too afraid to reply. Maybe I’m waiting for him to pull out an axe and say Heeeeeere’s Johnny! or something.

That’s right. Him – the most sinister, powerful, profoundly in-your-face Laker fan in the history of Earth – Jack Nicholson.

“What are we waiting for?” he says in that distinctive baritone.

My perception of him spins as if he’s staring at me from inside a front loading dryer, and when he steadies, he’s become the cartoonish Joker character he played in that 1989 Michael Keaton Batman movie.